Steve Potter Reviews I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer by Robert Lashley
I never dreamed you’d leave in summer
by Robert Lashley
A Review by steve potter
In setting out to write about Robert Lashley's debut novel, I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer, I was faced with my favorite sort of problem as a reviewer—so much could be said about the book that I wasn't sure where to begin, what to emphasize, and what to leave out. One could write much about the novel itself and also use it as an opening into a multitude of other conversations about racism, classism, social status, patriarchy, gender identity, sexual abuse, domestic violence, drug addiction, crime, cancel culture, and much more.
Often, in a novel rich with ideas and social commentary, a reader will happen upon a stretch that reads more like an essay, a speech, a diatribe. Lashley avoids that trap. The novel is full of deeply considered social commentary, yet it is all finely woven throughout the narrative. He keeps the story moving forward. The twists and turns of the emotional roller coaster ride he takes us on are well-timed and well-executed. Alliances shift. Friends become enemies, resolve their differences, and become friends again. This is a novel of ideas that never forgets that it is first and foremost a novel. The themes never elbow the narrative aside and take over.
An epistolary novel, the story is told via a series of letters the protagonist, Albert, writes to Professor Thompson, a counselor at the college where Albert is a freshman. A few letters written by Thompson addressed to Albert are also included. Albert expresses his opinions on social issues in his letters to Professor Thompson but always in relation to events in the story. He never goes off into rhetorical generalizations.
Albert is caught between worlds and is seen differently by different people at different times—street thug, young upwardly mobile college man, hipster.
Albert is a former member of the Crips who spent time in juvie for running drugs and robbing old ladies. He gets a second chance at life thanks to the intervention of some community leaders and mentors. I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer is, among other things, a redemption story. It's also a grief-driven tragedy, a love story, and a work of social realism with some of the qualities of a picaresque novel.
Albert is taken in by a well-known local author and social justice leader, Dr. Everett, and his wife, Estelle, after his release from juvie. Estelle is Aunt Estelle to Albert. She is one of Albert's deceased mother's best childhood friends. Dr. Everett teaches African-American Literature at the college Albert attends. Albert and Judith, another leading character of the novel, are in one of his classes.
Here is the section where Albert writes to Professor Thompson about reading Dr. Everett's autobiographical novel The School and how his enthusiasm in talking about the book caused some trouble for him at Mrs. Eulalah's beauty shop where he works:
I got so wrapped up talking about Dr. Everett's The School today that I forgot my place at the shop. I have read his articles and his videos about racism, equity, and what the White man puts us through, but I had never read his autobiographical novel until now. Wow, sir. Wow! I didn't know the trauma Dr. Everett went through to become a social justice scholar, and it was beautiful that he documented his struggle through art and dealt with racism in all-White schools. I dig what he says in his videos about Black manhood and the pain we brothers go through, but his art, professor, is something else. He and you were like I was as a kid, but y'all had more courage than me because y'all didn't punk out and be a runner.
On one level, I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer is a response to Richard Wright's 1940 novel Native Son. Perhaps I'd even go so far as to call it a rebuttal to Wright's novel. Allusions to Native Son appear throughout the book. I listed a few in an earlier draft of this review but decided that was too much of a spoiler, so I took them out. Better that you find them for yourself, dear reader.
A distinction I think about often is one between imitation and emulation—the imitator copies, whereas the emulator studies predecessors in order to equal or excel their achievements. Often, the imitator has a favorite writer he or she is trying to be just like, whereas the emulator reads widely and strives to be an original. Lashley is an emulator. His book learning is on display in I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer, but the fictive world he has created is entirely his own and based on his own personal observations of the world as he's experienced it. He is an author who knows the territory he maps.
A piece of well-intentioned but often bad writing advice is the notion that dialogue must always be crisp and snappy with lots of brief repartee back and forth between characters. That is certainly great advice for an author writing a spoof of a 1930s screwball comedy or for tense moments in thrillers. However, in life, you sometimes encounter people who talk so fast and furiously that it's tough to get a word in edgewise. Literature should reflect that and sometimes does, such as in portions of dialogue between April and Frank Wheeler in Richard Yates' Revolutionary Road.
Also, listening to other people tell you their stories is one of the best ways to broaden your understanding of the world. It builds empathy and can be one of the great joys of life. Literature should reflect that and sometimes does, such as in Rachel Cusk's trilogy of novels Outline, Transit, and Kudos.
And, of course, there are times in life when you simply need to shut up and listen. Albert is at such a time in his life. He needs to listen to the mentors and aunties around him as he considers what kind of a man he'd like to grow up to become. He listens to Dr. Everett talk about his struggles as a Black professor in White-dominated academia. He listens as Eulalah berates him for talking about Dr. Everett's novel in her beauty shop and gives him an unflattering view of Dr. Everett's past and the misogyny at the heart of his New Movement. She also tells Albert stories about his mother when she was a young woman. Through hearing their stories, and the stories of several other characters, we develop a broad view of an entire community of people.
Albert is caught between worlds and is seen differently by different people at different times—street thug, young upwardly mobile college man, hipster. He struggles with the issues of performative Blackness, code-switching, and the White Gaze. The language he uses in his letters to Professor Thompson changes repeatedly from cordial and professional to personal and warm, then to disrespectful, angry, and cold, then back to cordial. He struggles with his feelings about this mentor and his relationship to their mutual mentor, Professor Everett. At times, Albert refers to Professor Thompson informally by his first name, Andre. At other times, he refers to him cordially as brother. At still other times, he addresses him as dawg. Sometimes, this comes across as friendly, and at other times disrespectful. When their relationship is at its worst, he refers to him with a word that begins with the letter n that someone such as myself with European ancestry and pale skin ought not write.
Well, I could go on and on. The fact that I have repeatedly veered off into beginning essays on intersectionality, performative Blackness, and code-switching while writing this review is a testament to the quality of the writing and the degree of social engagement in I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer. As I sit here in judgment, in my role as critic, I am the embodiment of another issue Black folks face in the USA—the White Gaze.
Does it really even matter what some old White dude like me thinks of this novel? Probably not so much. I'll give you my opinion anyway. I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer is a fine, well-written, and thought-provoking novel. You should read it.
Steve Potter is the author of the novel Gangs With Greek Names, a short fiction collection called Easy Money & Other Stories, and two poetry collections: Mendacity Quirk Slipstream Snafu and Social Distance Sing. His poems, stories, and reviews have appeared in publications such as E·Ratio, Otoliths, Parole, and Word For/Word. Real Stand-Up Guys, the sequel to Gangs With Greek Names, is forthcoming.
I Never Dreamed You'd Leave In Summer
by Robert Lashley
Demersal Publishing
www.demersalpublishing.com
P.O. Box 575, Tacoma, WA 89401
ISBN 9798988180906 (paperback)
ISBN 9798988180913 (ebook) $9.99
2023, paperback 175 pages, $22.00